I had occasion this week to refer back to Mr. Lincoln’s Army, volume one of Bruce
Catton’s landmark work on the Army of the Potomac. I recently talked to one of my colleagues about the
writing style of modern Civil War authors. Much of it is certainly historically accurate but has an
element of dryness and structure that makes it difficult to enjoy. My friend is actually going back to
read Shakespeare to improve his own prose style. Maybe I should do that as well. It is no wonder that some of the best Civil War history is
written by journalists like Bruce Catton and Douglas Southall Freeman. It was Catton’s work that ignited my
interest as a youngster some 45 years ago and I am still drawn to it. Without ever having to been to Antietam
as a twelve year old, I could visualize it thanks to passages like these I
offer below. This post today, is
nothing more than an opportunity to go back and enjoy some of the beautiful
writing that I dare say many of you read and which drew you
into your own study of the Civil War. All of these passages beautifully evoke the early morning dawn of September 17,
1862 on the fields north of Sharpsburg but the second one is my favorite.
"There
was a tension in the atmosphere for the whole army that night. Survivors wrote long afterward that
there seemed to be something mysteriously ominous in the very air-stealthy,
muffled tramp of marching men who could not be seen but were sensed dimly as
moving shadows in the dark; outbursts of rifle fire up and down the invisible
picket lines, with flames lighting the sky now and then when gunners in the
advanced batteries opened fire; taut and nervous anxiety of those alert
sentinels communicating itself through all the bivouacs, where men tried to
sleep away the knowledge that the morrow would bring the biggest battle the
army had ever had; a ceaseless, restless sense of movement as if the army
stirred blindly in its sleep, with the clop-clop of belated couriers riding down
the inky dark lanes heard at intervals, sounding very lonely and far off."
"And
while they slept the lazy, rainy breeze drifted through the East Woods and the
West Wood and the cornfield, and riffed over the copings of the stone bridge to
the south, touching them for the last time before dead men made them
famous. The flags were furled and
the bugles stilled, and the hot metal of the guns on the ridges had cooled, and
the army was asleep-tenting tonight on the old camp ground, with never a song
to cheer because the voices that might sing it were all stilled on this most
crowded and most lonely of fields.
And whatever it may be that nerves men to die for a flag or a phrase or
a man or an inexpressible dream was drowsing with them, ready to wake with the
dawn."
"The
morning came in like the beginning of the Last Day, gray and dark and tensely
expectant. Mist lay on the ground,
heavy as fog in the hollow places, and the groves and valleys were drenched in
immense shadows. For a brief time
there was an ominous hush on the rolling fields, where the rival pickets
crouched behind bushes and fence corners, peering watchfully forward under damp
hat brims."